Russian troops continue their offensive in Donbass. On January 19, the OSUV Khortytsia reported that the Russians, using difficult weather conditions, tried to block Velyka Novoselka. The Russian army used armored vehicles to support the offensive.

On January 18, analysts of the DeepState project reported that Russian troops advanced near Velikaya Novoselka.

Encirclement attempt According to the Ukrainian General Staff report at the end of the day on January 22, Russian troops are still concentrating their main efforts in the Pokrovsky direction: on Wednesday it accounted for about two-thirds of all clashes along the entire front line.

Ukrainian military bloggers have been reporting in recent days that the garrison of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Velikaya Novoselka found itself in an extremely difficult situation, in a Russian bag with a very narrow neck.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine does not report anything about this, but only very succinctly informs about a certain number of military clashes in this area.

The 110th brigade reported that near Velyka Novoselka, Ukrainian units are experiencing an acute shortage of personnel, despite the presence of sufficient artillery and drones.

“Now, there is something to shoot and fly, there is no one to fight. There is a total lack of personnel in rifle units,” the military publication NV quotes as saying.

Soldiers say that Russian assaults usually take place in groups of four.? 6 people who attack Ukrainian positions from different directions. The most active enemy actions are recorded at dawn, when visibility is significantly deteriorated due to fog or rain, making aerial reconnaissance work difficult.. Enemy units use plantings and vegetation to avoid being hit by FPV drones.

“Unfortunately, it must be stated here that the time has come to make a decision on the withdrawal of the troops stationed there. I try not to give such advice, but the tendency is that there may be not an operational, but a physical cauldron, that is, a complete encirclement of this populated area,” says military observer Denis Popovich.

Dangerous breakthrough Velyka Novoselka is the most important defensive center of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which controlled the entire junction of the borders of Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye regions. In mid-January, a group of the Russian Armed Forces, advancing on the village from the southwest, captured the villages of Neskuchnoye and Vremevka. This deprived the Ukrainian Armed Forces of the opportunity to cross the Mokrye Yaly River, which separates Velikaya Novoselka from the “mainland”.

From the north, the regional center has been cut off from the main forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for several weeks now.

The capture of Velyka Novoselka will allow the Russian group to advance on the Donetsk-Zaporozhye highway on a wide front, pushing Ukrainian troops west from the outskirts of Kurakhovo.